Gentlemen Formerly Dressed by Sulari Gentill Page A

sharp and familiar terror.
    â€œWhat are your dreams about, Rowly?” Edna asked gently as she rested her head drowsily against his shoulder. She’d been awake to notice the manner in which he’d jolted back to consciousness.
    â€œIt’s all a bit muddled,” he said. “Mostly Germany. I can’t seem to get away from that moment when my arm snapped or when thatboy fired.” He smiled ruefully. “You’d think that since I know how it turns out…” Rowland dragged at his hair, irritated. The clarity of his mind’s eye had always served him as an artist by casting memory to vibrant detail, but now it forced him to relive those moments of agony and panic night after night.
    â€œI used to have nightmares after my mother died,” Edna said quietly. “I found her you see.”
    Rowland placed his uninjured arm around the sculptress. Marguerite Higgins had taken her own life when her daughter was just a child. He’d known the fact for only a short while, and so it staggered him still.
    â€œShe used a shotgun, you know.”
    Rowland shook his head and held Edna close to him, sickened by the thought of what she would have found after the shotgun had done its grisly work.
    Edna’s voice was quiet and sad. “There was so much blood, Rowly, more than seemed possible. Papa had the walls papered because the blood would show through no matter how many times we painted… but we couldn’t paper the ceiling.” She shuddered.
    â€œMy God, Ed, I’m sorry… I wish I could…”
    She looked up at him. “I’m all right, Rowly. It was a long time ago. Dear Papa… he stayed by my bed, holding my hand every night for a year. It kept away the nightmares.” She pulled Rowland’s arm gently off her shoulder and took his hand. “Why don’t you try to sleep now, Rowly?”
    â€œI’m a grown man, Ed.”
    â€œYou look so tired, darling,” she said, frowning. “Just try.”
    Rowland couldn’t deny he was tired. A kind of agitated exhaustion.
    Smiling suddenly, Edna stood and fetched the book which lay facedown and open on Milton’s chest. She wriggled back into a comfortable position beside Rowland.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Rowland asked, aware of the familiar rose scent of Edna’s closeness.
    â€œThis will help you sleep,” she promised opening the volume of John Milton’s Paradise Lost . “I remember studying it at school; it’d knock me out in seconds.” She laughed, leaning her head back on his shoulder as she did so. “And you may as well brush up—I suspect that Milt will be stealing from his namesake very soon.”
    Rowland smiled. He’d always kept note of what Milton was reading. It helped him decipher who exactly the poet was plagiarising. Clearly the connection had not escaped Edna either.
    She read then, her voice languid and drowsy. Perhaps it was that, or the malted milk, or the fact that the sculptress was curled into his side, but Rowland did sleep, and for a time, a short time, it was undisturbed.

9
    FOREIGN NEWS
LONDON ECONOMIC CONFERENCE

    June, 1933
    Sixty-six nations took their places last week at the long pewlike desks of the London Geological Museum, all ranged alphabetically, in French, by tactful Alfred the Seater so that Cordell Hull of Tennessee (Etats Unis) sat at the end of the row, before, not next to, the kinky-polled delegates from Addis Ababa (Ethiopie). The League of Nations organizing committee invited 67 nations but Panama was too poor to accept.
    Time Magazine
    B eresford presented the letter on a silver tray. Rowland opened it quickly with scant regard for the gold leaf embossing and wax seal on the envelope. Scanning the meticulous copperplate on the scallop-edged sheet within, he frowned.
    â€œProblem, Rowly?” Clyde asked.
    â€œA familial summons,” he said.
    â€œFrom